IJMS – my favorite open-access journal

I discovered the International Journal on Multicultural Societies (IJMS) last year. It is published by UNESCO, and since the late 1990s has included themes like “Pluralism and Multiculturalism in Colonial and Post-Colonial Societies”, “Multiculturalism and Political Integration in Modern Nation-States” and “Protecting Endangered Minority Languages: Sociolinguistic Perspectives”.

I’m consistently delighted every time I consult something from this publication. Today I was looking for sources defining multicultural governance, and I downloaded some of the free issues.

I stumbled on the article “Colonisation, Globalisation, and the Future of Languages in the Twenty-first Century”  by Salikoko S. Mufwene. Since I’ve read I don’t know how many articles on language politics, I consider myself pretty familiar with the debates and topics that are common to the subject. Not so with Mufwene. He even begins his article by pointing out that he will not be citing the regulars – Fishman, Calvet and others – but instead will look toward a fresh perspective on the exhausted topics of linguicide, language wars etc.

Let it be said that I still think linguicide is happening. I think that language wars are happening too. But Mufwene makes some great points, like:

“Anyone who claims that the spread of English around the world endangers indigenous languages should explain how this is possible in countries where it is only a lingua franca of an elite minority but is barely spoken by the vast majority, or a large proportion, of the population.”

Ahh.. the joys of the information age. Now I have to get back to writing my paper on language and multicultural governance in Mozambique.